Family of 'The Snake' singer speaks out about Donald Trump using the decades-old song as a rally cry

"How many people have heard 'The Snake?'" Donald
Trump regularly asks his large crowds.

"Do you want to hear 'The Snake?' Do you want to hear it?"

The crowd roars with thundering applause.

"I mean, people love it and I love it because it says what's
going to happen to us if we're not careful," Trump says.

And during a weekend rally to mark his 100th day in office,
Trump decided to insert a bit of a throwback to his campaign,
once again reading "The Snake."

"Does anybody want to hear it again?" Trump asked the crowd in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The response could only be taken as a resounding yes.

The song itself, a 1968 soul hit, tells the story of a woman who
takes in a snake and nurses it back to health, only to be bitten
by the snake once it's recovered. Trump thinks it's the perfect
metaphor for why the US shouldn't accept Syrian refugees and
needs to get "tough" along the US-Mexico border.

But the family of the man who performed "The Snake," Al Wilson,
said the singer may not have seen eye-to-eye with Trump on his
interpretation of the song.

Before speaking with Business Insider in September, Alene
Wilson-Harris, a daughter of Wilson, who died in 2008, said she
conferred with her father's brother and his best friend to help
best come to a conclusion on how her father would've felt about
Trump reading the song at his rallies.

"While I think that he would've had, at least some sort of
appreciation for the fact that his music is appreciated by Trump
to the affect that he would utilize the song, there are some
things in my father's life that may have been an interesting
perspective for him to have to grapple with in light of how [the
song] was used," she said. "And, some of the things that are the
platform of Trump."

Born in 1939, Wilson, a black American, grew up in segregated
Mississippi. He was from the same hometown as, and was good
friends with, James Chaney, the Civil Rights worker who's
killing, along with two others, led to the infamous "Mississippi
Burning" trial.

His family later moved to California with the hope of finding
better living conditions.

"My father, well, he grew up in a very volatile time for a young
black man," she said. "And, he was, unfortunately, in a position
to have to know what it was to actually leave a place because
there were life-threatening circumstances and hardships and all
of those type of things in order to try and make a life for
yourself somewhere else where those factors didn't exist."

The perspective he had after living through that, she said, would
put him on the opposite side of the refugee issue as Trump, who
has peddled the song as the perfect refugee metaphor.

"I think that there would be some perspective issues and
compassion that he would have in regard to anyone in that
position," she said. "And my father also has multiple
conversations with people, including my father's best friend and
my father's brother, just regarding different hardships he had
seen around the world in traveling."

"He was a very outward and loving people person," she continued.
"He was an embracing type of person to fans and friends and
things like that."

She told the story of a trip Wilson took to Curacao, the
Caribbean Island, where native peoples of the island approached
him as he was staying at a resort area and pleaded with him to
come and see their living conditions.

After visiting with them in their homes, Wilson-Harris said he
was later brought to tears by the "extremes" they were exposed to
while recounting the story to his brother.

"And so things like that, are things that not everyone
necessarily knows about my dad, but there's a depth of
perspective there when it comes to certain issues that are really
hot points right now," she said.

"And so, again, while my father was very embracing of all his
fans, and very appreciative of all of his admirers of his gifts
and talents and music, I'm not sure exactly how he would have
responded to that," she continued. "But I can only give
perspective to kind of give a little insight to his position in
life. And what his heart might have said."

But, she added, some members of her family are "at least at this
point ... possible Trump supporters."

Wilson-Harris also said her father was a regular
call-in on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, which she only recently
found out while talking to other member's of her family about
Trump's use of "The Snake."

Watch Wilson perform "The Snake" below:

In using the song, which Trump has at many of his rallies, he
sometimes credits it to Al Green, another famous soul singer of
the same era. He's also said the song, which he calls a poem, was
written in the 1990s.

"So this is called The Snake and this has to do with people
coming into our country, and I'll think you'll enjoy it," he said
before reading the song's lyrics at a Florida rally in September.
"Let's see. And more important than enjoy, I think it'll make a
point."

During his rendition, Trump takes a couple of liberties with
the lyrics, such as adding in a "like we're doing," after reading
the line, "Oh well, she cried, I'll take you in." He also added
"vicious" in front of "snake" during one of the songs final
verses, seemingly to make an added point.

"It's amazing, going to happen unless we get very very smart," he
said at one campaign stop, after finishing his reading of the
lyrics.

Taking a more poignant stance against Trump's use of the song was
the family of Oscar Brown Jr., the man who wrote the song in the
early 1960's. He died in 2005.

"We don't want him using these lyrics," Brown's daughter, Maggie
Brown, told The Chicago Tribune in March. "If Dad
were alive, he would've ripped (Trump) with a great poem in
rebuttal. Not only a poem and a song, but an essay and everything
else."